THE LONG ROAD DOWN
by ballastt
Summary: A story of 1960's London. Saul Croaker, fresh out of Hogwarts and living in a tiny flat in London, is partnered with the indecipherable and unsociable Unspeakable, Broderick Bode.


**A/N:** Believe it or not these aren't OCs lmao, I ended up on the wiki pages of Saul and Broderick, the two Unspeakables seen at the 1994 Quidditch World Cup game, and found myself desperate to write a stupid buddycop-style story about them.

 **Department of Boring Shit and Lazy Fucks**

Every Friday night for a year and a half, Saul left his boring-as-balls job in the Misuse of Muggle Artefacts office and headed to the _Jester and Goblin_ for a few whiskies and a handful of peanuts.

It was the only semblance of routine in his life. Every _single_ Friday he left his robe at work, draped over the mess on his desk in the hopes that none of his superiors would notice it over the weekend, and strolled out of the Ministry loosening his tie. Sometimes he stopped in the Atrium to flirt with the receptionists. Sometimes he got in the lift and missed his stop, leaning against the back wall with his hands in his pockets, daydreaming about the Auror offices and how he'd never have to put in the overtime that they did.

His job was boring and completely lacking in any kind of glamour. The Aurors were the rock stars of the Ministry; they wore expensive robes styled by some famous wizard on Savile Row, kept bottles of Firewiskey in their desks, burned a path through the pretty secretaries like no-one Saul had ever seen... and the lot of them, the whole smug stinking _lot_ , were utter bastards.

When he'd graduated from Hogwarts two years earlier, he'd dreamed of strutting through the Atrium with the other Aurors. Even now, when his boss confiscated the Butterbeer he'd oh-so-subtly smuggled into his waste-paper bin and delivered an agonising hour-long lecture about not drinking on shift, Saul thought about how much cooler his life would be if he could be bothered to put in the extra work to become one of them. He was pretty sure he wouldn't be living in a one-bedroom flat stinking of mildew. Cooper Calderwald had a house in _Kensington_ , for Merlin's sake, and he definitely didn't spend his Friday nights drinking alone at London's crappiest wizarding bar.

The _Jester and Goblin_ was a fifteen minute walk from the Ministry. It was a low-ceilinged, dimly lit dive bar with retro wizarding shit hanging from every wall, and bathroom stalls papered with Chocolate Frog cards (unnerving as fuck when you're trying to pee and famous witches won't stop waving at you). There was usually some up-and-coming rock band wailing in a corner, and at least one creepy hooded warlock drinking in the shadows, but the Scotch was cheap and Saul could stagger out at midnight without running into anyone from his department. Plus, the bartender didn't give him shit for eating all the bar snacks.

He'd wonder, much later, what had made him stay late on that particular Friday. There weren't any particularly attractive witches in, Jenko hadn't stocked up on his favourite paprika trailmix, and the band screeching away in one corner sounded like a cat being jammed arse-first into a paper shredder. And yet, when the clock over the bar strummed around to midnight, Saul didn't fall off his bar stool and crawl outside. He waggled his fingers at Jenks and ordered another whisky, utterly lost in thoughts of smug bastards who bought their pinstripe robes in Mayfair, and ways he could get a flat bottle of gin into his desk.

He was still there, humming tunelessly along to the crap playing across the room, when a man slid silently into the bar.

Saul didn't pay him any attention. He was fairly innocuous; walked straight to the bar and quietly ordered a drink - and anyway, Saul was three sheets to the wind and couldn't even see straight. At one point the guy tilted his head Saul's way and raised his glass. Saul, drunk enough to be anyone's best friend, clumsily toasted him and downed the rest of his drink.

In doing so, he closed one eye to better focus and lazily took in the man's face. The guy, who would introduce himself a few minutes later as Something Gorman (Saul hiccoughed and missed the first name), was older - maybe forty-five - with sun-weathered skin and receding blond hair and _mean_ blue eyes. He'd ordered a Dragon Barrel Brandy, and it stank.

"You work at the Ministry, don't you?" Something Gorman asked, his voice light and pleasant.

Saul's vision was swimming. He considered a tactical vomit and then walking home; it took him a good two minutes to remember that the guy had addressed him, but Gorman waited patiently with an amiable expression on his face. "Uh... Yeah, I'm... Department of Boring Shit and Lazy Fucks." Saul yawned. He was barely even speaking English.

"That's funny," Gorman smiled but didn't laugh. "Funny."

Saul looked at him again, this time more intently. He was wearing a polo shirt buttoned up to the throat and a thick, expensive leather jacket - details that Saul would have forgotten by morning. "You wanna'nother drink?" he asked cheerfully. "Jenko! C'mere mate."

"I think you've had enough, friend." Gorman said pleasantly. "How about I help you to the fireplace and we get you home? Come on, Mister Croaker."

Gorman pulled one of Saul's arms over his shoulders and helped him slide clumsily off the stool. He was surprisingly strong for someone so slight, and Saul noticed that the guy was shorter than him by at least seven or eight inches - an uneven, four-legged creature, they waded unsteadily across the room and into the huge fireplace, at which point Gorman propped him against the back wall and stepped back out again. Jenko kept the Floo powder in a clear vase on the mantel piece; Gorman took a handful and smiled that strange, pleasant smile.

"Are you ready, Mister Croaker?"

Saul saluted.

When the Aurors arrived he was face-down on his bed, one sock on, snoring like a wild animal and dreaming about breakfast fry-ups. Three flashes, and the exact same Savile-robe-wearing bastards he'd been cursing earlier appeared in his bedroom, taking a silent moment to look around at the impressive state of post-hurricane chaos that he lived in before they woke him up.

Still half-drunk and very confused, Saul rolled over to see three wands directed his way.

"Get up, Croaker," one of them said. "We need you to come with us."

Saul stared at him groggily, not fully convinced that he was actually awake. "Uh... beg pardon?"

"We're arresting you, dumbass," Mr Cool himself, Cooper Calderwald, waved his wand in a lazily-threatening manner. It was almost insulting, how little of a threat he considered Saul to be; had Saul himself not been too busy admiring the tailoring of his robes, he'd have protested. "The Unspeakables want to talk to you about your evening, and just how _this_ wound up in your pocket."

He held something up, and Saul squinted to focus on it. It was a tiny piece of paper, roughly the size of a business card, with something printed on it in neat black cursive. "Dunno what that is mate, but I don't see why you're arresting me for it. Why are you even going through my pockets? Slow night in the office?"

"Get up, Croaker," the first Auror repeated himself, this time with more volume. "The address written on here just vanished into thin air. Now get _up_. The Unspeakables want to talk to you."

He wasn't given much time to process anything that Calderwald or his friends had said; once the gravity of the situation - that he was being arrested drunk (again) - set in, a kind of teenager-caught-out-after-curfew weariness settled over Saul. The Aurors were such _ball-busters_. Don't pee on someone else's broomstick, Saul. Stop trying to Floo into the Ministry at three in the morning, Saul. Blah, blah, _blah_. It was no small miracle that he hadn't been fired yet... but then again, sobriety and good behaviour wasn't a pre-requisite to working in the Ministry's most boring department.

Well, it probably was... but his boss liked him.

The same couldn't be said for the three Aurors, who manhandled him all the way through the Atrium and practically threw him into the lift. Saul flipped them off and started rifling through his trouser pockets for left-over bar snacks, coming up with a melted chocolate pretzel, three salted pistachios, and the sticky-backed label for one of Gorman's bottles of Brandy. He tried to remember when (and why) he had pocketed it, but gave up pretty quickly and shrugged it off. What was presently more interesting to him were the Aurors' shoes, because he himself stood between them in one dirty sock and, in comparison, Calderwald's shiny loafers looked like they'd been dug out of a diamond mine.

The lift doors slid open and Saul was escorted into someone kind of mildly-terrifying interrogation room, in which stood four Unspeakables and one metal-frame chair. Calderwald pushed him into the chair and then the Aurors left, handing the offending slip of paper over as they went.

"Saul Croaker."

Saul desperately tried to look like he was taking this seriously. _Don't call them the Three Musketeers and D'Artagnon_ , he thought. It vaguely occurred to him that this wasn't something he should be doing drunk; it also occurred to him that this was the first time he had ever been in the same room as so many Unspeakables. When they ventured outside of the Department of Mysteries it tended to be either alone or in twos - they rarely came out in packs.

This must be important.

He looked around at them all, recognising one or two. Lipfield... Arthur Lipfield? He was the tall one, older than Merlin, falling apart like an old house. A redhead with tattoos that Saul couldn't name. The department's wonderchild, Broderick Bode; youngest Unspeakable ever, some kind of antisocial genius (potentially lived the most _boring_ life of all time). The fourth, an anaemic blond, was more than likely Chester Hattenberg - the Head of Department rarely seen outside of his offices, who existed around the rest of the Ministry as some kind of albino ghost.

"Hi." Saul awkwardly filled the silence, feeling very conspicuously messy in his untucked (and drink-stained) shirt and lack of shoes. Bode seemed to be taking his appearance as a personal insult and, rather than look directly at him, focused his gaze at a nondescript point somewhere over one of Saul's shoulders.

Miserable twat.

"Saul, we understand that you're inebriated and confused, so we'll make this as quick as possible and then get you back to your flat." Lipfield, the apparent voice of the group, stepped forward and held out the piece of paper. "We need you to tell us where this came from."

"I've honestly never seen it before in my life." Saul said truthfully. "All I did tonight was drink in the _Jester_ , and talk to some guy called Gorman."

The room stilled, and Saul knew straight away he'd said something wrong. Bode's eyes snapped down to his face; Lipfield withdrew his hand and stood up straight. The four Unspeakables looked down at him in careful, calculated silence for a long few minutes, with Saul sitting in front of them feeling like he was about to get the world's freakiest lapdance.

"Gorman." Lipfield repeated flatly. "Heron Gorman?"

Saul shrugged. "Didn't catch his first name."

"What did he look like?" Bode spoke for the first time, his youth curiously absent in the melancholy drum of his voice.

"Uh... Kind of tanned, blue eyes, thin blond hair. Leather jacket. Looked pretty gangster, I suppose."

Another calculated pause. The Unspeakables exchanged looks. Then, taking in a calm breath through his nose, Lipfield gave Saul the vague smile one would give a child that they were no longer interested in playing with. "Thank you for your help Saul. Enjoy your weekend, and someone from the Department will probably come and speak to you on Monday morning. As with all things regarding our work, we would appreciate you keeping tonight's events to yourself."

The other three were already on their way out of the room; Bode gave Saul an unreadable look as he breezed past.

Saul looked at his watch. It was four-thirty. The sun would already be cutting through the window of his bloody bedroom, and he was now wide awake and desperate to know who the Gorman guy he'd met was, and somewhere in London a building had dissapeared and damn it all if the Unspeakables weren't the most infuriating bastards he'd ever encountered.

Trudging on his own through the empty Atrium, Saul was pretty sure he now disliked them even more than the Aurors.


End file.
